Document signatures#

A wiki page can be sent to one named person to sign. They get a private link by email, read the document in the browser, fill in whatever blanks it asks for, type their name and sign. They need no Laver account and never see the rest of your workspace.

Contracts, policies, permission slips, a statement of work at the end of a brief: anything you would otherwise print, sign, scan and email back.

Before you start#

• You need edit access to the page. Whoever is asked to sign a document is a decision about the document, so read access is not enough — see Roles and permissions.
• Signatures are on both plans. A workspace that is behind on payment, archived or suspended stops answering its signature links until it is put right.
• A private page can be sent for signature. Publishing a page is a different decision with a different switch — see Wiki pages — and a signature request is a send to one address rather than a publication.
• The signature routes take session tokens only. An API key gets a 401, so an agent cannot send your documents to anybody.

Ask somebody to sign#

1. Open the page and choose Get a signature from the ⋯ menu.
2. Type their email address. One address per request; send a second request for a second signatory.
3. Choose the section to sign. The list is the page's top-level headings as they are right now, plus The end of the document, which is where a whole-page sign-off belongs.
4. Add a message if there is something they should know before signing — 500 characters, optional.
5. Send request.

They are emailed a private link. It opens that one page, read-only; the signature is the only thing they can add.

The blanks they fill in#

A document that needs a company name, a date and a hand-drawn signature at the bottom used to have those written in afterwards by somebody who was not the person agreeing to it. Instead, mark the blanks while you write the page. In the editor, type / and choose:

Give each blank a label — up to 80 characters — so it reads as a question: Signed on behalf of, Date, Job title.

Only the blanks inside the section being signed are asked of that signatory. A section may carry up to 20 of them, of which 8 may be drawn signatures; a request that asks for more is refused when you send it, so the error lands on you rather than on the stranger who has just filled it all in.

Answers are kept with the request, not written into the page, along with the label each one had at the time. The page goes on being edited afterwards; what somebody agreed to does not.

Your own signature, for documents you sign yourself#

/signature is the other one, and it is unrelated to a request: it draws your own signature on a pad and keeps it, so signing the next document is a click rather than a hunt through your downloads folder. Up to 12 saved signatures per person, reusable in any page, ticket or note, and deletable from the same menu — deleting one stops it rendering everywhere it was used.

What the signatory sees#

• The title of that one page, its body, the name of the wiki and workspace it is in, who asked, what they said, and the images the page draws.
• Nothing else. Not the page's comments, its history, its parent, its children, its other attachments, and no other page — including other pages under signature.
• If the section has been moved since the request was sent, they are told so. If it has been deleted, the signature goes at the end of the document and they are told that too. A signature is never quietly slid under a paragraph somebody has not read.

They fill in the blanks, type their full name, and press Sign. Then they can Download a copy (PDF) — the document they signed, with their answers drawn into it and a receipt at the top. The link keeps working for them, so reopening it later shows their own signature rather than a blank page.

If they say no#

The other button is I am not going to sign this, with an optional sentence of up to 500 characters. It is quoted back to you exactly as typed, in the signature list and in the email that tells you. Nothing is required: a form that insists on a reason is one people answer by closing the tab.

Somebody who declined and opens the link a week later is shown that they declined, and what they said.

The link expires after thirty days#

Long enough to survive a holiday, short enough that a forgotten request is not a permanent door into a document.

• Three days before it runs out, the person you asked gets one reminder.
• When it runs out unanswered, you get one notice saying so.

Each is sent once. An expired request stays in the list as expired; send a new one if it still matters.

Following it up#

The same dialog lists everything sent from this page, with its address, the section and its state — waiting, signed, declined, expired or withdrawn.

• View document opens what a signatory actually signed, with their answers in place. If the page has been edited since they signed, it says so, on screen and in the file.
• Download takes that away as a PDF, for filing with the contract.
• Withdraw cancels a request nobody has answered yet and its link stops working. A signature that has been given cannot be withdrawn — it is the workspace's record that somebody agreed to something.

You are emailed when a request is signed, declined or expires, and every request you send writes wiki_page.signature_requested to the workspace audit log with the address it went to.

Limits#

What this is not#

Laver records who signed, what they signed and when — the same click-through standard as accepting a data processing agreement online. There is no identity check on the address the link was sent to, no certificate authority and no qualified electronic signature. For documents where that is the requirement, use a product built for it.